Apple of Eden
by rosethatgrewfromconcrete
Summary: Does the child pay for the sins of the father? At what price? Crude language and adult themes. Twisted HBP & DH.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1:**

**__****This story twists HBP & DH. Draco is still a Death Eater in Sixth Year with his task to kill Dumbledore, Katie Bell gets cursed, and Ron poisoned but Hermione gives him an education of his blindness—eventually they start dating, despite his crimes, secretly. Dumbledore dies June 1997, not at the hands of Draco. Hermione does not return for her Seventh Year, instead she's helping Harry and Ron with the horcuxes, sneaking to see Draco, and finds out she's pregnant in August 1997 and stops helping to go into hiding. She gives birth to a son in March 1998. Battle at Hogwarts happens in May 1998 and shortly thereafter Draco is arrested for attempted assassination and a slew of other crimes, his trial begins August 1998. Azkaban has been reformed to be more structurally similar to an American prison in regards to visitation, but exteriorly looks the same with minor adjustments to its interior. They elope in January 1999.**

**January 21, 1999**

"Look at the picture they painted of me," splintered, it falls from his lips, barely audible. It's just his voice in the abyss of darkness, a sea of ebony that has drowned out the two figures in bed. "They're sentencing them all to life," he whispers—all the Death Eaters have been given a minimum of life. "I'm synonymous with all of them," he continues because to the public, he's just as monstrous as Bellatrix and it certainly doesn't help they are biologically related.

"Draco," she timidly murmurs and it quivers slightly because he's nearing the verdict for his trial and she's just as fearful as he is of what the jury will pronounce of his guilt, "you aren't," and she declares it with such validity that he can't find cracks in the confidence of it.

In the blindness, her lips find purchase just below his jaw as she straddles him by swinging her leg over his waist in vain hope that if she distracts him this instant, he will forgot all about the trial for the moment and just be in the moment with her before anything else with them can fall apart.

His nails dig into her hips.

"Hermione," he breathlessly pleads, "they will convict me," and it's urgent and frantic. He's trying to halt her because she's not seeing the world as it really is. But he groans with the sensually slow rocking of her hips and his train of thought crumbling away, trying to tell her that he won't be acquitted or granted probation.

"Harry hasn't testified," she murmurs, her lips caressing his earlobe.

There's some illumination because the boy that defeated the Dark Lord will testify in his defense and the public's adoration and reverence for the hero of their world must be a saving grace for him, there isn't anything else that can save him.

"_Harry, please," she grovels, "I'm not asking for him." _

_Somberly, he glances to this girl he's known since she asked him if he's seen a toad, to the little boy she's cradling in her arms, just this innocent child. _

"_Without you, they'll bury him," and it's so hopeless. _

_They'll bury him in prison and he knows it because they've done so with every Death Eater and he won't be excluded from the mass condemnation. And if they do, there will be this little boy left behind—just this innocent little boy that she will have to raise alone. _

"_I can lie about Katie Bell and Ron," he hoarsely croaks because it's so wrong, but he's doing it for the girl that has stayed at his side since he was eleven, "They don't have anything damning in those allegations to convict him. But I can't lie about Dumbledore." He's doing it for her son, just this innocent little boy. _

"_I know," she concedes because she can't save him from that sin, not when there were witnesses that will easily turn on him for self-preservation because there is no honor among thieves. _

The darkness stole his sight, thankfully, because if he had seen her—her eyes full of guilt—he would know that Harry Potter could not save him completely, he would not have been so grateful that she always managed to make the darkness seem so bright if he had, that everything would be all right.

**February 10, 1999**

They would describe his eyes as glazed, glassy, haunted, dull and muted of the steel they knew, just how lifeless he looked with the bang of the gavel, the judge's sentence echoing over the uproar of the reporters and the shriek of Narcissa because he was just a boy.

With her shouts, the whole world would know that it wasn't just a young eighteen year old being sent off to prison, she would spill all the secrets of the Malfoy name when she screamed about a little boy this inmate had fathered, how the child wouldn't have a father in his childhood.

And his eyes were far more sullen at her declaration.

_Ten years. _

_He was going to serve ten years. _

He never looked more haunted.

"_Draco," there's no word to describe the hoarseness and the brokenness of her whisper before he leaves for his last day in court. Her left hand delicately drags up her bare arm as she leans against the doorframe of their door leading out to the hallway, barefoot and naked, so vulnerable as she swallows thickly and her gaze averted to her left hand, nude of a diamond. Her tongue itches to plead with him to stay. "Draco," she tries again. _

"_I can't," he whispers and it's déjà vu of all the times in the past during the war when he would tell her the same words, when she was pregnant with their son and left alone in this villa in France, fearing that maybe he will not return, when she had given birth, still so fearful. _

"_Wait for me," and it's the next lines he whispers in their rehearsed dance of farewell, but he's lying this time because he knows and she knows that it's just an empty promise to make. He won't be returning, not for years if the jury and judge are merciful because there is that lurking possibility of life. _

_Through the saltiness that dances down to her lips, trickling like rain, she softly smiles because she has to believe the lie to let him go. _

_It's out of context, but it's what she has responded with, "Be safe, love." _

"_Give him kisses," he whispers back nostalgically because in the past, he had said this with the intent that she would shower her growing belly with kisses for his sake in his absence—he had always greeted their baby with a kiss in fear that one day, he might not ever again. And he had said it when their son had been born. _

_He breaks the memory by stepping towards her, his lips at her forehead, lingering. "I'm sorry," he mumbles against her forehead, "Sorry, so sorry." _

_A thin layer of flesh obscures her vision of him because it's far too late. _

"_We'll wait for you," she brokenly promises, reverting back to the memory. "Always, Draco." _

It was looped, endless, incessant—the footage of him being handcuffed and shackled into custody with that emptiness haunting him. It was smeared everywhere for all to see.

In the chaos, his eyes found his mother—the moment captured in the footage.

He's just that little boy, wandering down the hallway, his mother just in sight, and he's reaching out for her because of the dark, terrified of the monster under his bed, asking her to take him away from his bedroom because he's afraid.

She's screaming about him and his son, but he can't hear the words—it's just desperate noise in his ears. She's screaming because she's loosing her son, just as she lost her husband, shackled and handcuffed and led away to incarceration.

He should be screaming and kicking and clawing and squirming and fighting and yelling and shouting and…he's not. He's loosing his son, just this little boy, just this infant. He's loosing his wife, this girl he just married. He's eighteen and he's loosing more than half the time he's been alive to serve behind bars. He's loosing his freedom and he's numb and hollow. Dead.

_His lips dance in the soft locks of this little boy, nestled in his crib. _

"_I'm going away," he softly tells the boy despite the boy being far too young to understand his father, "I won't be coming home and one day, when you're old enough to understand, I'll explain it all to you. But mummy is here, she'll always be. Just the two of you," and he cracks because fuck, how do you say goodbye to your son, a little boy that won't remember you anyway. "Maybe you'll miss me, but know that I never left you. I'm sorry that things have to be this way." _

_The child stirs because of his father, softly crying as he murmurs to his son. _

"_Maybe one day you'll forgive me for this," he kisses the boy's brow, "Maybe you'll understand that I love you, but I have to say goodbye." _

"Hermione, they convicted him," Harry had softly told her and she fell apart.

Her knees bend as she crumbles to pieces, falling down into a crouch because of the burden that Atlas shouldered is far too much for her to hold anymore. She's splintered like shards of glass when a vase falls before it collides against the wood floor and it crashes violently, vomiting glass, smearing the floor with its carcass, inevitable to break because of fragility.

"Ten years," he mechanically tells her.

**February 14, 1999**

The arrogant, defiant tilt of his chin remains as he stands degraded and humiliated before the Aurors processing the incoming inmates of Azkaban. He's deprived of any stitch of clothing, stripped bare to his ass cheeks, placed on display for security measures with scrutinizing eyes disgustedly thrown to the twisted and marred ebony scar upon his left forearm. The façade of security drops the moment he's standing far too long still naked, their gaze raking over the condemned, dehumanizing them by branding them with numbers to identify—a mere statistic to be released in the next year to inform the public of crime rates. They deny the inmates the urge to shield the most intimate parts under the scrutiny. He clenches his fists so the veins in his forearms protrude from his flesh and holds them at his side as he twists and turns for them like meat at the butchery and his steely gaze is unforgiving and bitter, hardened and harsh. The officers demanded them to drop down and squat and spread their ass cheeks. He bites his tongue as he abides, glowering at them as he stands shoulder to shoulder with several other inmates.

Her forehead presses against the tile of the shower, a thin papery layer of flesh obscuring her glistening caramel orbs from the world, trickling tears intertwining with the stream of water from above, her curls have plastered themselves to her back and wrapped around her ribcage. Her nails dig into the soft flesh of her sides leaving crescent bites as she attempts to hold together the fabric of her heart that has been torn into shreds with his conviction, the absence of a father to her young son, and the abandonment of a husband.

A strangled sob cracks through her lips as she slips down to her bum, pulling her knees to her chest, cradling herself because everything within her feels as if it has shattered and her bare hands are piecing together the broken shards that have sliced her hands until her sanguine blood runs thickly.

She's so afraid. She's a single mother to a little boy. She's nineteen years old and she's a single mother of a little boy that will grow up with an incarcerated father. She's abandoned and facing all the odds. Her son is susceptible to everything society says he will be condemned to: prison, drop out, addiction, alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, early death. She's afraid she's not strong enough to prevent her little boy from falling victim. She's afraid she won't be able to save him. She's afraid, so very afraid. Afraid of the questions a little boy will ask of his father, a son to his mother for the crimes of his father, and she is afraid if she can answer them so her son understands, forgives and accepts, absolves and does not commit himself. And any ounce of courage she once had from everything she faced alongside the Boy Who Lived disappears as she faces the world with a son and an imprisoned father of her child. She's afraid because her husband is incarcerated. Afraid for her marriage, her husband, and how they will ever pull through this.

The mask he wears of defiance to the officers as they escort him and herd him through the intake process is but a mask. He omits the fear and anxiety that have settled deep into his bones the moment he kissed his son's crown through salty tears, his hand brushing through the boy's soft locks, murmuring his love for him and when he softly collapsed above his wife, the mother of his child, his lips at her ear, whispering his love and apologies, the soft kiss to her jaw and earlobe and then her lips, her arms wrapping around him, clinging to him as their chests lay against another, limbs tangled in the sheets. He's afraid of the influence of his absence will have on his young son, the wilting possibility of his wife finding solace with another, of being encaged like an animal for many years, of forgetting life outside this, of loosing the two that reside with the torn halves of his soul and heart, of the unknown. He's afraid of adjusting to this life and loosing any concept of life outside, of forgetting, of remembering, of his son paying for his crimes, and he's so very afraid.

He's escorted to his cell, a rolled up mattress in hand, a bag of his necessities clenched in his hand. His life has been reduced to mobility, without a home, without a name, without his own personal effects, and he's just a number within a system at the hands of the conductor. They stripped him of his black suit tailored for him, his Slytherin ring, his black Italian leather loafers, his wand, and his expensive watch, all stored within a bag for him to collect upon his release. His other possessions sit in the closet of his bedroom of his parent's home, inevitable to wither away and his pictures will gather dust and they will become the possessions of a ghost and they will no longer be his when he returns because they will be shadows of a time long since passed, memories of the dead and he will truly be wearing clothing hidden for years in the prison that housed him that will truly not be his either, and he will have a son that will not truly be his apart from flesh and blood because they will have no memories outside of the walls that encaged him. His wife won't even be really his because an inmate can't ever be a husband when he's been divorced from her with the constraints of prison. He will have nothing because they even took his name and gave him a number that will hold no worth when he is released because it will no longer be his, and they have taken his freedom and that will always be absent from him, and he will have nothing apart from the body he occupies, but that will be tarnished and worn from them.

She drowns in the soft silk of his dress shirt that dangles down to her mid thigh, her fingers running over the soft fabrics of his shirts that hang in the closet, eyes roaming the sea of clothing that he's worn in all her memories, clothes she's never seen him wear before, his shoes shining and tucked away, belts and ties, his watches, his socks, his dirty laundry, freshly folded laundry that has yet to be tucked away. She wonders as she whirls around in the closet, touching every possession of his, if a widow feels this way when she ambles through her home, stumbling upon her deceased husband's artifacts, the ruins of a person, the objects left behind, misplaced and scattered. She leaves the socks thrown in the drawer, not pairing them together, she leaves the dirty clothes, leaves the folded ones, leaves the shoes that have been shifted from the position, leaves everything as he left it because she can't ruffle the memory of him and pretend that he had always left everything perfect in his haste to leave. She wants to live with a ghost by pretending every morning when she walks in that he's merely forgotten again to put away his clothes because she doesn't have the strength to forget and she fears she will.

When she wanders down the halls of his family home, she finds traces of him seeping from the very foundation of the home from the stray book he had left on a mahogany table, to the empty glass sitting on the marble counter, the pictures of his childhood and the recently captured memories, and she bitter-sweetly smiles at them. When she gently pushes the door of her son's nursery, she shakily exhales at the overwhelming nostalgia that washes over her with every intricate detail he had taken to set up the room from painting the soft swirls of the galaxies of the universe above on the ceiling to the history carved into the walls adorned with the greatest heroes of ancient Greece, stories unraveling for the small infant, to the toys carefully chosen for the young boy from the blocks to the teddy bear, to the cradle, and the little blond wispy haired son wrapped in a cocoon of ivory cotton covering his kicking legs to his fists.

A barren cell, white washed, void. No window, only artificial light to illuminate the small rectangle cell he will be housed in for his entire stay. A single cot of hard metal, unforgiving and unyielding, for him to be haunted by his worst fears in his sleep. A lone shelf to hold the few possessions he holds. A cramped desk to scrawl letters to those he's been ostracized from: to a son far too young to understand, to the waiting single mother—his wife, to the mother who's lost both husband and son to Azkaban within months—his own mother. Layers of brick painted over in an abyss of white to surround him and the concrete floor beneath his feet. A metal toilet thrown in, not sheltered by privacy, but nothing is private anymore; his letters will be read by other eyes, words dissected apart for hidden meanings, his cell subject to searches at the whim of the officers, items riffled through to search for contraband, his body inspected for weapons, stripped to his boxers in raids, nude in showers shared with others, constantly followed and watched. He already feels the suffocation of the cell, the desolation of it all, and the oppression.

A lone tear trickles down his face as he glances around, hoping to canvas the walls with the ingrained images of his son upon them and her face. He longs to gouge the white from the walls to paint them vividly with the images of the Great Hall when he was young and naïve, the Quidditch pitch, her cradling their son as he latches to his mother's breast suckling from it, the rising sun, the sunset, the falling of snow in Hogsmeade, her smile, his mother reading him a story tucked beside him in the night, the rose gardens of his childhood home, a roaring fire as she reads a book, a squirming child as he bounces back slightly on his heels to soothe his son, the moon and its stars twinkling, her lips as she vows herself to him.

She cradles the young child to her chest, his tiny hands against her collarbone, his feet at her ribcage, and she gently rocks in the rocking chair of oak. Her wand lays flat against a forgotten dresser, a strange contraption murmurs out a sad tune, the crying of a piano trickling out beneath a soft spoken voice, apologizing, confessing, atoning, consoling, loving, guilty, offering, giving, heartbroken, regretting, accepting, forgiving, understanding. And she cleaves to the son she holds, the son that this soft spoken voice is whispering to from the father that has been taken from his child, and she hopes that the boy will recognize the voice of his father from deep within the womb and the soft caresses as an infant so that when he is old enough to truly visit him, he will know his father. It will be the only thing the boy truly has of his father, memories ingrained since his infancy because the boy will not know that his father labored over the colors and shapes of the artwork upon his walls, over the letters he's scrawled to give to his son when he is older, over the hours spent assembling the crib, the devoted father in the night to soothe the disturbed infant needing attention, or the memories deprived of a father and son as the little boy grows.

That night, Draco Malfoy shivers from the thin sheet that he has draped over himself, laying on his side as he stiffly remains on the rigid mattress facing the wall as he blankly stares at the grout between the bricks. He's been swallowed by the darkness when the lights were quickly confiscated and taken from his grasp to analyze the layers of brick to divert his mind from drowning in the loneliness. The helplessness embraces him in the night when he gently runs his hand over the wrinkles of the sheet to find the warmth of her, itching to entangle in her curls or pull her close, his fingers ghosting over the swell of her belly from her pregnancy with their son, and he finds no presence of her; he releases a strangled choking sound from his lips when he desperately searches the bed for her until his fingers painfully find the wall. His ears strain to hear the soft cries of his son in the night and he only hears the silence that echoes; footprints dance down his face as he drowns in the silence.

***There will be more about his trial, the war and sixth year. Understand that in sixth year, it was quite messy because she turned a blind eye to his task of Dumbledore, choosing to neglect it, but always trying to save him. And as their 'seventh year' rolled around, there were many things he didn't tell her about the things he was seeing as a Death Eater. When she found out she was pregnant, they eventually ended up relocating her to a villa in France. She moved into the Manor after the war ended, just before his trial. **

***Also, I want to clarify for confusion about his conviction and first day imprisoned at Azkaban. With his conviction, he was then taken into custody and transitioned to jail—usually a place to hold detainees waiting for trial, waiting for bail, or minor sentencing but also a place to hold inmates to then transfer them to more secure prisons. Sometimes inmates may find themselves at jail for a little bit because transport has to be arranged without warning to the inmate to prevent planned breakouts on route. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: **

***I want to clarify that certain memories will be given dates and italicized, just depending on if I deem it vital to include the date for storyline. Some will not have dates, but they generally happen at some point that isn't necessarily specific to the storyline. **

_**June 30, 1997**_

_It's so gentle, "Good evening, Draco." _

_His stomach churns violently and his palm loosens on the handle of his wand and he swallows thickly before he tightens his grasp again, reminding himself of his task. His feet shuffling forward, but it's as if he's waddling through mud with the heaviness of his legs. He swallows again because his throat is so parched and his tongue so heavy that it can't form words to respond. _

_Hoarsely, he croaks out, "Are you alone, Professor?" _

_The elder softly glances to the boy, heart-breaking he acknowledges the boy before him but he doesn't move to answer the child. He's just another boy with a father incarcerated and he intimately can relate to the boy with his own father. His lips pull to the side in some sad smile. _

"_Yes," he answers the child finally, heaving it out as if expelling a breath from his lungs with weariness. "Are you," he asks the boy with far more weariness and exhaustion. _

"_There's a legion," the boys whispers and he can't even utter the label of Death Eater, "They infiltrated here tonight," and it's far more prideful and the boy's gaunt face sneers again after so long. _

"_How," it's laced with an undertone as if he's not really asking the boy how he smuggled in the Death Eaters, and the elder isn't, not really, because he's not blind to the budding relationship between the boy and a certain witch and he can't understand how the boy can betray her. _

"_The vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirements. She has a twin," he cockily answers. _

"_Ingenious," he murmurs to the boy, but it's hollow. _

_The boy's wand dips lower before he lifts it up again, still aiming it shakily at the elder._

"_Where are they," the elder asks softly and his eyes glance around the tower. _

"_Coming," the boy whispers. _

_The boy's gaze darts nervously around, frantic. _

"_Why are you here alone," brokenly asked by the elder, who knows far too much about the boy than the boy knows, waiting for the boy, but knowing the boy is incapable. _

_Desperately, "He chose me for this." _

_He roughly swallows again, but he can't utter the spell. _

"_Draco, you are no assassin," he softly murmurs. _

"_How would you know," the boy angrily snaps before he flushes with the childishness of it. "You don't know what I've done." _

"_You almost killed Katie Bell and Ronald Weasley," he confronts the boy and the boy flinches slightly. "You have been trying, with increasingly desperation, to kill me all year. Forgive me," and his voice softens, "Draco, but they have been feeble attempts…So feeble, to be honest, that I wonder whether your heart has really been in it." There's some knowing glint hidden behind the crescent moon spectacles. _

"_I'm serving him," the boy mechanically spews, "It's a honor." _

_He pulls up his sleeve to reveal the Dark Mark. _

"_But what about her," and he doesn't clarify because there are witnesses that need not know about Miss Granger with this boy. _

_The boy's wand is jabbed towards him with the boy's features twisted in anger. _

"_She's nothing," the boy lies, "Just a fling." _

"_You're being careless and reckless," the elder reprimands, ignoring the boy because he sees through the lie, "She could easily be pregnant now." _

_The boy blanches because how could he know about them—they've been so careful staying secret. _

"_Is she safe, Draco?" _

_The boy almost spits out a request for him to shut up. _

"_They won't be gentle if they find out she's pregnant. They certainly won't if they discover you are the father. The Dark Lord isn't forgiving for such transgressions, Draco." _

"_She isn't," he harshly refutes and it's slightly frantic because she can't be. _

_He disregards the boy, "And if she is, Draco. What will be of the child? You know who the mother is and you know she will never be accepted into the ranks. She will have to be a secret. How will you keep it from Voldemort? You expect to raise this child in a war with you on your side, despite the mother. What will you tell the child when you leave to serve him?" _

_The ugly masks of fear and worry carve into the boy's face. _

"_Draco, I knew a boy long ago that made all the wrong choices," he gently whispers, "Let me help you." He wants the boy to say something, to ask for help, to plead, anything because he can't let this boy go, can't let him be lost when he's just a boy. _

"_He chose me," the boy spits because he's far too late to try to save him. "I have to do this. I have to." _

"_You'll lose her," the elder pleads, but his voice isn't as quavering, it's rough because he's trying to tell this boy that he only has so much time left before it's far too late. _

**February 15, 1999**

The heels of his palm dig into his eye sockets, his spine shuddering because he's that same boy that was grasping at straws to drag his corpse from the grave he had found himself drowning in, and maybe it's the nightmares are the residual shadows of war, a war where he bore witness to things he can never unsee as much as he gouges his eyes. His shoulders slumping forward as he nearly pulls his knees to his chest in this abyss because there is no time-turner for him to use to find himself back in her arms after witnessing heinousness alone in the Manor and she isn't there at his side, curled into him in the waning hours of dawn before he must leave once again return back to the Dark Lord's side and there isn't a child of innocence he can slip off to either and brush his fingers through the boy's soft strands or ghost his fingers over the smooth flesh of his belly or face, cradle the child to soothe away the past. It's just him in this forsaken cell of brick and metal.

"You'll be late," she groggily murmurs, disoriented with reality, her mind stuck on the cycle of his return to his trial on Monday after the respite over the weekend, expecting him to rise before her to shower and cradle their son as he feeds him, forgetting that there is nothing to be late for—he's convicted and incarcerated and most importantly, he's not here with her. "Draco, you have to go," she murmurs thickly, still not awake.

Her fingertips traverse over the wrinkled sheets to the inhabited emptiness, riding over the valley and hills of the sheets when she should have brushed against his warmth at some point already, but it's abandoned and cold of the sheets that she finds. Desperate and frantic, her fingers spread in their scour for his presence.

"Draco," she chokes out, not finding him beside her.

"Hermione," he pleads fearfully, all alone in this barren cell, asking to be awoken because this can't be reality—it has to be a nightmare he will wake from if she will just caress his cheek, whisper his name, shake his shoulder slightly, murmur that it's all just a dream, prod him gently until he is back in her embrace in his bed.

The light flickers on at the hand of the conductor and it's foreign that this is his sunrise, artificial and ugly, because it lacks the radiance of the sun's embrace and there isn't that sense of hope. Maybe because there is no window for him to look out to see the sun, the moon, or even the harsh belligerent waves of the ocean around the prison—day and night is all artificial. Or maybe it's so hideous because it feels as if it's from a microscope for the inmates to be scrutinized with as some subject. Maybe even it's the lack of warmth of the sun's caress that makes it so ugly and man-made.

Five hours after midnight, it's still dark out and the sun hasn't risen, but he would have been up and slinking off to the shower, slipping off to cradle their son as he softly spoke to the boy, set the boy back in his crib and kissed his forehead tenderly, and then he would returned to dress meticulously for his day in court in a suit of ebony, kissed her forehead before he slipped out of the room once again to head down to the kitchen to pour over the files as he feeds the child spoonful of the gobs of fruit and vegetables between his perusing the files. But he's not and the house is awfully silent with his absence.

"Miss," the house-elf feebly speaks, "Master Draco isn't here," and in the hands of this timid elf is an empty palm sized glass dish from having fed the infant in his master's absence, the sight of which crumples any notion that he had slept past the alarm, any notion that things weren't as they had been before everything fell apart—that she's here without him and he's there, she can't even speak the name of where, but he's there, so far away.

"Of course," she weakly concedes once she stops roaming the bed with her hand in search of him, embarrassed that she had believed he was still here and that she had neglected her son's feeding. "He's not home, of course," she hollowly echoes.

**February 17, 1999**

"What took you so long," he asks just above a whisper, lips languidly moving to form the words that tumble from his mouth fracturedly, his eyes mirroring the brokenness with the drowning faded grey, his blink excruciatingly slow to obscure the desolation.

"It was the earliest they would approve of visitation," she tells him softly because it wasn't by choice that she abandoned him, her heart cracking with how despondent prison has diminished and dwindled him to.

His gaze droops to his wrists, bruised from the handcuffs suffocating them with the chokingly tight restraint from the guards, and he quietly and solemnly sits there. "You didn't bring him," he morosely mutters, fascinated with the bruise strangling his wrist because it hadn't been there previously this morning, just as the son and wife weren't there beside the inmate.

Puling, she gnaws on her lip, averting her gaze, not even bothering to brush away the wisps of tears upon her cheeks because it has only taken a week for them to be so fractured in a sentence of ten years.

She doesn't want her son prodded and scoured, violated by these guards for every visit to his father. She doesn't want the boy to see the prison garb, branding his father a criminal. She doesn't want the boy to have to speak with his father through a magical barrier, never able to touch him, only for allotted time frames never more than a few minutes. She doesn't want the boy to ask about the doors that must be opened by a guard, the heaviness of the security, the bars, the handcuffs, let alone if he shall ask about his father's garb. She doesn't want this susceptible little boy exposed to prison when he can easily find this his home when he comes of age with an absent father, doesn't want the child to associate prison as the norm for all men, and doesn't want this as comfort.

"Not for the first visit," she partially lies, omitting all her fears of the repercussions of a son visiting his incarcerated father, "This is so foreign to me and as a mother, I couldn't until I had experienced it," diplomatically maneuvering.

He scrutinizes the answer, adept enough with his times as a child in his father's shadow to detect such lies and tactics of the politicians, mulling it over because the seed of doubt has settled into his soul, the roots reaching out to his heart and he can't quite believe her justification, but he acquiesces because it's his wife and he should trust her, more than anyone alive. Perhaps, the father innately in him recognizes her concerns and unspoken fears and worries and concedes that maybe the boy shouldn't be exposed that he finds an inkling of truth to her words.

"How is he," they stumble from his lips because as a father they are not fluently spoken, let alone universal between the population, but far more understood between fathers with limited and restrained presence with their children ranging from nasty divorce to vengeful exes and he falls in neither label as a married man.

A glimpse of a smile crawls out from her young face, aged by insomnia with nights spent weeping silently in the lonely bed and watching the little boy her womb had nurtured because maybe he will be taken away from her, her cheeks gaunt and thin because she hasn't had an appetite, preferring to distract herself with their son, and maybe had he paid more heed to her in his trial, he would have seen her thinning as much as he had because of anxiety and dread and the foreboding sense of the clock nearing midnight. She looks like that girl all those years ago in the throng of dancing teenagers, beautiful and unfettered, in their fourth year, ignorant to fate and destiny. "Waddling," she hums.

"Didn't have the courtesy to let me know," he contentiously spits, "I thought I was the father, not the sperm donor. I guess prison distinguishes how you really see me."

Her beauty wilts. Maybe it's far more accurate to say the caged animal trampled her beauty, the hostile oppression violently muzzled it, brewing an explosion inevitably.

Gratingly, "I'm telling you now."

"Because I asked," he ruthlessly slits the throat of any notion she might have conceived about informing the father that the child was no longer crawling was honorable if the mother told him directly to his face instead of a letter.

She bristles at the scathing commentary. "Am I even your wife? To me, it seems as if I'm just the woman that mothered your son and nothing more."

At the tip of his tongue rests an atrocious comment about wives and fucking and the lack-there-of for him as an inmate that could be made, but he doesn't because he has no paternal rights to his son as an inmate. "Divorce me," he challenges, "Annul it. Do whatever the fuck you want with our marriage. Either way, you're," he drawls, motioning for the muggle term, "my _baby mama _and I am still an inmate."

She recoils as if struck with the back of his hand, bile rising in her throat because this is her husband speaking to her like this.

_**July 2, 1997**_

"_Leave," hostility entangled with the letters and crawling up the vine of her wand, prodding and digging into the underside of his jaw, a ruthlessness haunting her eyes that have frigidly found him in the dark, and all the stories of betrayal and love ending in a bloody massacre do not seem so surreal or incomprehensible. _

"_I didn't," he reiterates softly, "Hermione, I didn't," he gently murmurs, craning his face closer to her despite the wand at his throat, trying to lean his forehead against her, brush their noses or even boldly, caress her lips. _

"_You disarmed him," she hisses, "You tried to kill Dumbledore." Her stomach violently churns at the notion of what this boy nearly did. "Fuck you," she enunciates lethargically. _

_He flinches at the animosity. _

**February 17, 1999**

Detachedly, "You don't even care about us," and her chin tilts up slightly, "You don't? Not at all?" Her brows furrow slightly, crumpling with the gravity of his words from before or maybe it's a shattering marriage, but aren't they connected anyways.

He's muzzled by the question because he does—he's so afraid of loosing her.

***I will be out of the country, spending three weeks in Ghana without Internet so please excuse the delay in update. I leave the 25th of July and won't be back until August 16th. Hopefully I will be able to write during the trip. Maybe will get to update another chapter, I do have a layover in New York for eight hours. Additionally, this will be my senior year and I can already expect updates to be limited with applications and SAT. But please be patient. I will not abandon this.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: **

**February 23, 1999**

The son's hands reach out for his father, only to find the barrier between them and the child cries out of sheer frustration of his father within sight after so long but not able to be carried by him.

"Scorpius, Daddy's here," the mother chants in the boy's ear, futile in soothing the boy, and she's ignorant to the inmate's flinch at the comment because it implies his absence and it connotes a separation.

The inmate is incapable of soothing the boy, not knowing what to say to a child that can't comprehend his words, not knowing because all this boy's life, he could easily be soothed by rocking or swaying in the arms of his father or mother, but he's sitting behind this barrier, thickly swallowing and unable to soothe the boy according to his experience and knowledge.

"Draco, say something," she pleads.

But he doesn't—insecure and unsure of what he could say—because he's this teenage father that doesn't comprehend what he's supposed to do for this child he fathered, he's this father that was hardly there from the beginning for this boy and he can't fill in the gaps of the abyss he's left with, he's this son that never grew up with a father to reciprocate what he saw in his childhood, and he's just a boy that's lost in the sea of life. He wets his lips with his tongue, stalling and grasping with something to say but his tongue is laden and constrained and the sounds don't string together to form words. Searchingly, he gazes at this little boy, trying to find inspiration for the words he can't recall their pronunciations and meanings to, but it's a foreign language he's hearing, not able to understand; tears of frustration glistening in his eyes because he can't translate what the little boy is demanding with his wails and reaching out to the inmate.

Maybe it'd be easy to tell the child that he's there, but it'd acknowledge that he wasn't always there and it hardly seems like some comfort to be offered when the boy has spent already so much time without his presence and it'd be arrogant to assume that confirming his presence would assuage the child. And to vocalize his inability—to ask what he should say to the boy—would further support any inkling she possessed about his capabilities as a father.

"Look, Scorp, it's Daddy," she's pleading because there isn't anything else she knows what to do to soothe her son, "Right there, sweetie," and she's pointing out the inmate to the boy, vainly hoping that the boy recognizes the face and isn't distracted by the orange.

If the distance with the barrier wasn't enough to separate father and son, the inability of father to soothe his son is widening the ever-growing chasm between them that before hadn't been so wide, stretched now by physicality and the gap that had always been there that had once been easily reached over to bring together the rent halves, this gap that is gouged by incarceration and absence. The inmate sees it—his feet are at the edge of his half and his arms aren't long enough to reach the boy on the other side. Tears prickle the corner of his eyes when the boy isn't tangible to the father.

"Scorp, it's Daddy, don't you see," and it's coarse from swallowing back the tears.

_**November 1982**_

"_Draco, it's Daddy," the blonde beauty softly whispers to the little boy clinging to her neck because of the stranger that has invaded his home, gently rubbing the small child's back to coax him into safety and comfort to re-introduce father and son after so long with her husband's trial. _

_The man's brow furrows because this isn't the greeting he had expected when he returned home—hadn't time meant to stand still and he would come home to a clingy little boy that cried in the night, restlessly sleeping, and a little boy that would follow him around, trying shoes far too large for his little feet because he wanted to be his father, a little boy far too enchanted with him, not this little boy that doesn't recognize him. _

"_Cissa," he queries, slightly lost and fractured. _

_There isn't anything she can offer to her husband to assuage the situation because he nearly left her alone to raise his son and he inherently pushed her and their son second to the Dark Lord and she's bordering on belligerency because she should have never been beneath a half-blood power-hungry fool when she was his wife and the mother of his son. But she won't lash her tongue and retaliate for what he's done because they have a son together and she certainly isn't looking to be divorced and stranded at her parents and financially dependent on his child support, or to be that single mother that only sees her son on the weekends because the courts granted her husband custody because he was financially stable with a home the boy already knew. Nor does she want the publicity of divorce especially since he had been acquitted and not convicted. _

"_Draco," she gently coaxes the child, trying to pull him away from her so he'll look at his father, "it's Daddy, he's here." _

_The boy is far too young to remember the days when his father came home at night, sometimes even in the waning hours of the morning, when his father cradled him in his arms briefly before slipping off to serve the Dark Lord, too young to remember that night when the Aurors raided the Manor before dawn to take away his father, arresting the man as his wife cradled their son, weeping and pleading for them to not take him away as the boy shrieked, not knowing what was happening. _

Rheumy, the inmate washes his parched throat with his saliva, stalling because his son isn't recognizing him until his tongue finally forces out, "Scorpius, I'm here." He pauses and lies, "Right here and I'm not going anywhere."

She bites her tongue because she can't interrupt the moment to unveil a lie and maybe she wants to disillusion herself to fall for its seduction when she just wants her husband home to be there. Her eyes glitter with tears as she further obscures reality, "Daddy's not going anywhere, Scorp."

Her eyes glance up to the inmate's because there is something not so buried with her words—something about divorce far away from her horizon and something about marriage that's still existing—but he doesn't comment about the implied because there is still this little boy, squawking and shrieking and crying.

"What's that lullaby," he softly asks his wife because maybe it will soothe the boy if both sing to the child as she rocks him to convince the boy he's in the arms of his mother and father as it had once been. "That one about birds," he clarifies.

"Hush, little baby, don't say a word," she begins delicately. "Daddy's going to buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird doesn't sing," she slowly whispers to the boy that is calming down in the rocking waves his mother created.

"Daddy's going to scoop you up," he intervenes, steering away from the original, "in his arms. I'll rock you through the night," and he's not even singing, just promising things he can't vow to, "Mummy can sing to you as I hold you and she'll sing all about when this mockingbird wouldn't sing."

Smiling through trickling tears, she continues in some skeleton of the lullaby, "Hush, little baby, don't you cry. Daddy wants to see you smile and if you won't smile, Mummy might have to tickle you until you do. Daddy and Mummy promise that everything will be all right."

**March 4, 1999**

"_Draco," the old man feebly whispers, half-moon spectacles drooping with the weary and broken gaze, some tragedy tainting the elder's gaze. _

_But his wand rises and the headmaster stops his words from leaving his mouth, paralyzed with the intrusion that the young boy hasn't seen yet because the young child is standing there behind his father, watching horror-struck at the atrocity. _

"_Daddy," the little boy whispers faintly, trembling as he addresses the same boy the elder had just addressed, "what are you doing?" _

_His spine crawls and his stomach violently churns at the sound of the voice, but he can't stop the words from spilling from his mouth. _

"_The Dark Lord chose me for this," and it's horrifically proud and he stalks forward to the unarmed wizard, ignoring the little boy that is still watching his father. _

"_Daddy," the boy pleads, not grasping what his father is about to do, but knowing that something is wrong, "Where's Mummy?" _

"_Draco, where is Hermione," and there's fear in the elder's eyes before he darts his gaze to the little boy, clutching tightly to his blanket, scouring the tower for his mother that had been beside him until he had seen his father, trailing quickly after him, following him as he left behind his mother to helplessly search the castle for the little boy lost from her sights as the Death Eaters invaded._

"_Daddy," the boy shrieks because he's being ignored. _

_There's a shriek, piercing and echoing, and he swallows thickly because he swears it's feminine and his heart stutters because shouldn't their son be with her. A scream of desperation and fear—something that twists his stomach because it's not just a young girl screaming for having been captured, it's something far more and a little voice in his head says that it's the scream of a mother, devastated and helpless and fighting. _

He drags his hands roughly over his face because it was just a dream. It's him in this cell alone and the two of them are tucked away in Malfoy Manor, safe, and Dumbledore is dead and it's all just a nightmare, one of the few that have repeatedly haunted him. It's just a dream, he tells himself again.

But there remains that lingering fear that the Death Eaters on the run, evading capture still, have managed to lurk unto the grounds of Malfoy Manor, having been previously aware of its location from the Dark Lord's stay in the war with the full knowledge of his betrayal to the Dark Lord with his son, mothered by the infamous Hermione Granger. Nor to neglect that his mother is partially at fault for the Dark Lord's defeat at Hogwarts when she lied to him about Potter being dead when she had supposedly preached superiority of blood.

Hunched over her desk—more like Draco's since she is living in his childhood room—scribbling furiously over how she can work out the finances if she wishes to attend some scholarly institution for school, having missed out on Hogwarts with her son. Whether she can afford some night classes, thrown in with daycare and the expenses of a child that is constantly growing, and rent or mortgage if she decides to leave the nest of Narcissa for the sake of her little family, praying that she won't have to dip into Malfoy fortune because she'd rather not be that girl that married an inmate knowing he was facing incarceration and then taking considerable chunks out of his bank account. Especially after said account suffered considerable drawbacks with Narcissa funding the defense for both her husband and son in their trials and her smaller one, not to mention the fading accounts that the Malfoy family company has retained since their convictions, dwindling the income significantly. But if she doesn't, she'll have to get a job and that will be more to pay for daycare and she'll only be making minimum wage as a single teenage mother and she just might drown in bills. And she won't stoop to ask for support from her parents or Narcissa and she won't even breach the subject because Narcissa will tell her that the Malfoy fortune is hers since she not only married her son, but she is the mother of the Malfoy heir, not when she can't because it shouldn't be wasted on a girl that got knocked up, a girl that should have been more careful with contraception. Especially because the moment she had found out he was involved with Dumbledore's death, she had thrown out her pills, believing she wouldn't need them anymore, and then a month later rekindling their relationship quickly and still not protected and not even telling him, but it had slipped her mind with the war and everything. And she certainly doesn't want the government to help out because she'll be another number they accumulate to deter teens from pregnancy.

She sighs exhaustedly because she'll only be able to live in a small one bedroom apartment in a shabby and run-down—inner city or urban area as the politicians will call it, or ghetto as the poor would—to even survive, barely. And it's not something she wants to put her son around because it exacerbates his likelihood for all the things the statistics say is his future.

Everything isn't all right.

***Thank you for all the reviews, follows, and favorites. Updates my take longer because I don't feel all that motivated, but reviewsand follows will quicken updates. So please review.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: **

***I just wanted to take the time out to thank all who review, favorite and follow this. Sorry for the long wait—I've been caught with figuring out my gap year and university apps. And I kept deleting this chapter and starting again with it. **

**March 7, 1999**

The elder gently twists the bands of her wedding ring and engagement ring—diamonds moving side to side, rocking like a boat—standing in the doorway, apprehensive as the young mother bathes the little boy, a hand on his crown to prevent the soapy suds from leaking down to his eyes as her other gently runs through his fine strands to rinse.

"It's unnecessary for you to spend so much time with him," the elder softly whispers from years of having been so detached from the actual motherly affection as candidly expressed, from years of restricted poise of high society, years of a husband and family that reprimanded against her affection the little she did convey. But despite the softness of it, it's harsh and condescending. "There are nannies, wet nurses, house-elves," she lists to explain to the girl, not aware of how she is being received to the young mother.

"He's my responsibility," she refutes without the hostility expected with the house-elf comment or the slight implication about her parenting abilities lacking, "As his mother, I need to be the one from the beginning." And she's carefully constructing her speech because she could easily make a rude reference to how this mother's son is incarcerated and he had been raised in that manner and she can't afford to make that mistake as a mother, but she won't because she can't afford to not have the Manor for her until she can figure something else out.

_**September 1988**_

_The word trickles out from the boy's mouth—Mudblood—and a deafening silence pursues it. His mother's lips thinly pressed together because it's a sore wound to remind her of her husband's sins, bitter that his pureblood wife was disregarded for the whims and ideals of a half-blood fool and his father uncomfortably shifts in his seat at the dinning table because he knows exactly the bitterness in his wife's mouth over such a term, though she doesn't disprove of its use or connotation, but rather the unpleasant memories associated with it. _

_The boy darts his eyes back and forth because hadn't he always heard his father casually spit it out in denunciation. "Did I do something wrong," the boy timidly asks, breaking the silence. _

_His father tugs harshly at his left sleeve and his mother's gaze lands upon his father's obscured forearm. _

"_No," his mother softly assures, her bitterness dissolving because her son has done no wrong, but she wickedly throws a simmering glare towards her husband for the things he has put her through in their marriage. "You have done nothing wrong, Draco," and she smiles, tilting her lips to the side to convey to the boy he is in no fault. _

_With a swift warning, "Narcissa, don't," and his father averts his gaze back to his steak. _

"_You've been overly cautious, Lucius," she sickly retorts, "The boy has never seen you bare-chested or sleeveless." And it's far more than him merely not allowing the boy to see the Dark Mark for fear of explaining that he had nearly tainted the Malfoy name from his youthful dallies with Dark Lords and how he barely clawed his way of disgrace. _

"_Let the past stay buried," he diplomatically commands her to drop the subject because the boy need not know. _

_Her smile transforms to taunting, "Ashamed?" _

_Snapping, "Mind your tongue." _

_Her eyes sweep back to their son, lost in the confusion of things he hasn't been told about his father. "Draco, half-bloods are just as filthy as mudbloods," she tells the boy, inherently trying to never let her son fall to the illusions of her husband that blindly knelt to a half-blood fool. _

"I understand the muggle tendency to stay at home with the child—that home maker," she elaborates without intention to offend, but she cringes microscopically when she sees the brunette tense at the comment, "but you're the brightest witch of your age," and it's nearly veiled by the compliment, "and I would hate for you to ever slightly detest having Scorpius," and any attempts to smooth over the point fall apart because it's such an assumption to make, a prediction for another mother to speak of. Let alone for the ending to sound so genuine and believable—that a mother could regret having been a mother when she had, not having waited, not having had the opportunity for university, waited until after the war to conceive. But then her soft sapphire gaze lifts up to the young mother and it conveys the pull of regrets of having not been selfish, not been young and the overt sense of love for the child still with all the regrets. "You're young," the elder softly murmurs and it explains everything in that look shared, the exchange.

The younger glances away, back to her son because to her ears, it sounds far more than just having discovered a pregnancy and considering abortion for the sake to have that future. She bites her tongue from asking if it explains the distance of mother and incarcerated son.

_**July 1996**_

_Graciously, she tilts the decanter, intricately adorned with swirls on the smooth surface, pouring an excessive fill of alcohol into her glass and would most likely incur a rise of the brow at the strong liquor she's poured far beyond usual consumption. She doesn't bother to leave the decanter back to the collection of alcohol, preferring it within access for when she polishes off her glass, glassy eyes revealing that she's already tipsy from earlier drinks and the tears that inevitably will slide down her cheek, wallowing in her sorrows. _

_She's years away—back to when her husband was twenty-six and she was twenty-three, pregnant with her son and completely unprepared for raising this child, not having wanted the child until down the line because she had wanted to be young—wanted to travel more—but she was married young and all the traditions expected, waiting anxiously for the fruit of the marriage to be bore. Maybe she should have finished up university, but she didn't because she was engaged and the family told her to wait until after to return when things weren't so chaotic with the planning, but married life was demanding with a husband that was very old-fashioned and she just never did. But what's haunting the most is that if she had waited, Draco wouldn't have been born and maybe she wouldn't be entangled with Lucius and maybe she could have divorced him after the scandal with the Dark Lord's fall in 1981 and maybe she could have finished her education and traveled and been young and she wouldn't be here today with an incarcerated husband or a son that will stain his hands with blood at sixteen. _

"_Mum," the boy cries out to his distant mother, standing there, waiting for her acknowledgment because by no means is he assimilating the concept that he has to murder his Headmaster and his stomach is churning at the notion and he's never been more afraid. Nor to disregard that he's always on the verge of vomiting, retching up his guts from his aunt that delightedly tortures and maims—and kills with ease. _

_Lethargically, she cranes her gaze to her son. "Not now," she whispers brokenly, looking away again. _

"_Mum," he aggressively bites out and she glances back to the boy, "you know what he's asked of me," and it's so utterly desperate and lost, "I'm not," and he can't say the title of what he'd be if he did. _

_There are no words of comfort offered to the child. _

"_He's a powerful wizard," the boy trails off frantically, "Order of Merlin, Chief Warlock," and his voice becomes so soft, it's inaudible. _

"_You took the mark, you knelt to the Dark Lord and you must execute his demands," she hollowly speaks, slightly condescending because hadn't she told the boy to not follow this half-blood. _

"_Aunt Bella said that I had to help atone for father's mistakes," the boy dully whispers back, trying to explain that it hadn't been something he always wanted—he knew the arrogance of the Dark Lord from the first war—and he knew what that kind of taint to a name did to a man involved that scandal. And despite how he saw mudbloods, he didn't see the Dark Lord as a cause that deserved his unfaltering loyalty so young and he feared that the Dark Lord would fall again from his foolish mistakes again as he had before. "She said that he wasn't so merciful and that since father was serving his sentence, he might have been intent for you to bear the responsibility as his wife." _

"_You sold your soul to the devil." _

_Angrily, "I was just trying to protect you from having to pay for father's sins as if what he did wasn't enough," he hisses with her disregard. _

_She bitterly smiles. "I could have protected myself if I had waited," and she's slurring, intoxicated beyond comprehension of the truths she's spilling, "to have a child. Had I waited a year or two, I wouldn't have stayed with him—would have used the scandal with the Dark Lord to leave, divorced him, but I had a son with him, something that kept me entangled with him and I couldn't leave," and she's rambling, "I never wanted to be a mother either, wasn't ready then." _

_He bristles at the last comment. _

"_I regret having had Draco," and she's unaware of who is listening to these words. _

"Can you hand me the towel," the younger awkwardly asks, trying to vainly deter the continuation of this conversation, praying to escape because she doesn't know what to say to these things her mother-in-law is speaking of to her.

**March 13, 1999**

Snarling, "I have no son," the inmate sneers to his wife, "that blood traitor is not my son," he clarifies explicitly.

A tear trickles down her cheek at his hostility. "Lucius, it's Draco," she murmurs brokenly, trying to remind her husband that it's the little boy he once came home to after his exoneration, hoping the boy would run into his arms, it's his son and only child.

"He's not my son," the inmate harshly reiterates—having been able to accept the boy for all his faults: the Granger girl beating him academically, his failure to obey the Dark Lord, his inability to execute the Dark Lord's orders, the disgrace of being convicted, being branded a Death Eater to the public, his falling grades in his sixth year, but he can't forgive the boy for having slept with the mudblood to betray his ancestry, let alone fathered a child with her and raised it with her, marrying her.

"Lucius," she reprimands.

"I didn't raise my son to stoop that low."

"She's the brightest witch of her age," the wife counters, trying to let her husband see that at least she is a witch, not some muggle.

He bitterly chuckles at the notion of that label. "I would have rather the fool rape her for lust, fuck her even, but he fell for her sorcery and fell in love with the mudblood," he spews belligerently, "Animalistic lust is tolerable, but the bitch wasn't supposed to be fucked, keep the child, and then wed. My son wouldn't have, not with how he was raised."

"He did the honorable thing and married her as the mother of his son," she argues.

"Honorable would have been to terminate that pregnancy."

"The Dark Lord is dead," and she's implying that his archaic beliefs need to be buried because they have a son married to a muggleborn and a grandson that is a half-blood.

"So is my son," the father detachedly murmurs.

Tears prickle in the sapphire gaze, "I love you," she whispers and it's not some confession for him to smile at, she's telling him that with everything he's ever done to them in their marriage, maybe this is the breaking point, the point when no one can glue together the shards, "I love you," and it's hollow this time. Her left hand shakily touches the barrier, "Twenty years, Lucius," she continues, diamonds glistening, hand alone because he hasn't raised his—he's made the choice, made it years ago before their son had been born. But she doesn't say anything else—just looking at him.

Staring blankly in the mirror, Narcissa Malfoy pushes the two diamond rings away, hidden from sight for the first time in two decades, not slipping them onto her left finger as habit had been.

She dips the quill into the ink well before elegantly penning a name she hasn't written in ages—Andromeda.

_I know the circumstances are vastly different, but after twenty years, I have found myself without a husband, and maybe it was long ago really, but today was the day I let him go. _

_You may hate me for my husband's allegiances and my unwavering support for such causes, but please know that my son's wife is not a pure-blood, and my grandson is a half-blood, and all these notions about purity have faded away for me because I've seen what it's done to my family—my son is incarcerated and my grandson is growing up without him. I'll admit that I am still not completely rid of those beliefs with regards to muggles, but I fully embrace Hermione Granger as my daughter-in-law. _

_Andromeda, you're my older sister, the one that was kind and gentle when I needed you growing up and I need someone that understands. And I know it's been many years since I've last talked to you—I watched you silently as you left our parents' home, wiping away your tears, mute as they denounced you for having married your husband, not having said a word because I didn't know what to say when I was far too young to understand why you had because if you hadn't you would have been right beside me with some pure-blood fanatic of a husband. _

_I understand far too late, Andy. _

_Cissa_


End file.
